The present invention relates in general to client/server data communication systems and, more particularly, to a mail server included in an electronic mail system for use within a client/server data processing system. More particularly still, the present invention is directed towards a method and apparatus for monitoring electronic mail systems.
Computer systems are well known in the art and have become a business staple and are also found in many homes. One feature available to the business world is that of using electronic mailing (email) to send and receive messages and other information to and from one another in a business setting. Similarly, home computers, such as desk tops or laptops, and other information devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), allow telecommuting such that a user can connect to the user""s work server and down load and upload messages.
The email system allows clients of a network system, which is maintained by a server system, to send messages or data from one user to another. In order to minimize disk space and requirements as well as to maximize functionality and consistency of the electronic mailing engine used in the network system, the engine is typically located on the server and is merely accessed by a client in order to send messages or retrieve messages to or from another user or client on the server system. In this way, the client system typically allows the user to perform such operations as composing, updating, and sending messages while the server in such a system provides, in part, a server based message repository as well as providing message transmission and reception functions for the user at the client level.
A traditional email system 100, configured to operate in what is referred to as a consumer host mode, is illustrated in FIG. 1. The email system 100 includes a number of consumers and/or businesses 102xe2x88x921 (xe2x80x9cabc.comxe2x80x9d) through 102xe2x88x92n (xe2x80x9cxyz.govxe2x80x9d) each of which is coupled to a service provider (SP) 104 (xe2x80x9cisp.netxe2x80x9d). Traditionally, the service provider (SP) 104 provides the various consumers and/or businesses 102 with just an unprotected IP router. The consumers and/or businesses 102 also operate and maintain their own application servers, including the email server, DNS server, and (if needed) LDAP server (not shown). For their own protection, each of the consumers and/or businesses 102 must operate through a firewall that filters out undesirable packets and insulates the organization""s internal network from the Internet. Notice that for many organizations, especially small ones, the email server may actually be the firewall system.
In the email system 100, those consumers and/or businesses 102xe2x88x921 through 102xe2x88x92n who wish to read their mail must be connected to a service provider (SP) email server 106. The SP 106 also operates an email mailbox 108, and a DNS server 110 that provides the following services, a primary master server for the SP""s own domain (ISP.net), to designate as the root server for all consumers and/or businesses, act as a primary master server for consumers and/or businesses who do not wish to maintain their own public DNS server, and as a secondary server for consumers and/or businesses who prefer to maintain their own public server.
As part of the services provided by the SP 106, an SMTP relay host 112 that is managed by the SP offers a number of value added services, for which the SP may charge additional fees. In some cases, the relay host can be configured to allow the relay host to accept and hold the consumer""s email when their mail server is down. However, unfortunately, the relay host imposes a significant management burden on the SP since in some cases, consumer email may live on this server for an indefinite time raising issues of backup and failure recovery. If one of the consumer servers fails because of being swamped, for example, then the consumer""s email may roll over to the SP""s relay host. Because of this, most SPs do not offer a relay host for those consumers and/or businesses that are hosting their own email server. The SP also provides a directory service in the form of the LDAP Directory server that is located at the consumer""s site, which can be operated by the consumer. In this way, most organizations do not expose their LDAP servers to the public network for security reasons.
In the example shown in FIG. 1, a mail user in ABC, Inc. (which lawfully owns its DNS domain name abc.com, but relies on the ISP isp.net to host its email) desiring to send and receive mail uses the domain name username@aabc.com even though his mailserver is really mailhost.isp.net. It also means that any user in the abc.com domain, connects to a mailhost in the domain abc.comxe2x80x94for example mail.abc.comxe2x80x94to access his/her mail.
Since the email system 100 requires a separate mail server to be supported by the SP 106 for each of the domains abc.com through xyz.gov, although well understood and easy to manage, the email system 100 is not cost effective for small domains. In addition, as the number of domains increases, the management of the individual services becomes increasingly unwieldy. Internet service providers (ISPs) have a growing interest in hosting email services for always larger and more numerous organizations. Many businesses see the ability to farm out email services as a very attractive cost-saving idea. It is therefore desirable that an email service provider be able to offer email services to multiple organizations each of which has their own virtual domain and to support the ability to define such domains in the directory and host them on a shared mail server. Thus, an email architecture that can support a single mail server which, in turn, can support many different domains associated with consumers and/or businesses is desirable. Among other things, this email architecture would be useful for a mail service provider such as ISP 104.
In addition, it would be useful to provide monitoring capabilities for electronic mail systems that include a service provider serving several domains associated with different consumers and/or businesses. However, given the complexity of such an email system, it is typically difficult to isolate a problem. Furthermore, it would be desirable to provide a monitoring system that is capable of isolating and automatically alerting the users of problems that may exist with the electronic mail system.
In view of foregoing, there is a need to provide for methods and apparatus for monitoring electronic mail systems capable of supporting multiple domains.
According to the present invention, a standards-based messaging system is disclosed. The disclosed messaging system includes a mail server capable of offering email services to multiple organizations each of which has its own virtual domain. In addition, the messaging system is capable of providing monitoring capabilities that may be exercised locally be organizations that are served by the mail server. In accordance with one aspect of this invention, a messaging system including a monitoring system is disclosed. Advantageously, a remote user located in an organization served by a mail server, can perform a variety of monitoring tasks remotely. Furthermore, monitoring can be done automatically without requiring a local administrator to have knowledge about the specific implementation details about services such as IMAP, POP, SMTP, IDAP provided by the mail server.
As an email server having at least one email server component, an email performance parameter monitor for monitoring an email server component performance parameter associated with the email server component, one embodiment of the invention includes: a test message transmitter coupled to the mail server component suitably arranged to transmit a test message to the email server component; a component response message receiver coupled to the email performance parameter monitor suitably arranged to receive a component response message from the component that is based upon the test message; a comparator unit coupled to the component response message receiver arranged to determine the email server component performance parameter based upon the component response message and the test message; a data storage unit coupled to the comparator unit arranged to store the determined email server component performance parameter; and a display device coupled to the data storage unit for displaying the determined email server component performance parameter.
As a mail performance monitor suitable for monitoring the electronic mail services provided by an electronic mail server, one embodiment of the invention provides a monitoring interface suitable for initiating a set of monitoring commands to perform monitoring tasks associated with the mail services provided by one or more components of the mail server.
As a computer readable media including computer program code for monitoring electronic mail services provided by an electronic mail server, one embodiment of the invention includes computer program code for providing a monitoring interface that can be used to initiate a set of monitoring commands to perform monitoring tasks associated with the mail services provided by one or more components of the mail server.